Tag Archives: Venus

In 1982 (35 years ago!) I finished my basic undergraduate degree, majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science (after sniffing around the job market, I continued my studies for an honours year). This was the year that the compact disc and the Commodore 64 computer came out:

It was also a year of conflict – Argentina started a war with the UK over the Falklands Islands, and Israel invaded Lebanon. On a more positive note, there were several movies which became cult classics, such as Tron, E.T., and Conan the Barbarian. The superb science fiction movie Blade Runner stood out from the crowd (even with the flaws in the original cinema release):

OSIRIS-REx, launched in 2016, currently en route to asteroid 101955 Bennu, which it should reach in 2018. It will then take a sample which should arrive back home in 2023 (image shown below the Earth).

In addition to the above, BepiColombo is scheduled to launch for Mercury in October 2018, and SolO is scheduled to launch for the Sun that same month. Also, InSight is scheduled to launch for Mars in May 2018, and Solar Probe Plus is scheduled to launch for the Sun in August 2018.

Like this:

The planets Venus and Jupiter were in conjunction last night, as the photograph above (by Neal Simpson) shows. The diagram below (by the Fourmilab) shows why: although Venus is much closer to Earth (and thus much brighter), the three planets are almost in a straight line. Venus and Jupiter should still be pretty close in the sky for the next few nights.

Like this:

Here is another gem from XKCD: surface areas of the various solid objects in the solar system – excluding the gasballs Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, but including their moons (click to zoom). As might be expected from images of the planets, Earth and Venus have the lion’s share of the real estate:

Like this:

The planet Venus is about to reach inferior conjunction, the point of closest approach to Earth. Currently, Venus is 43.8 million kilometres (27.2 million miles) away. In a telescope, it is visible as a large, thin crescent – this video (by Stanko Jankovic) shows the planet on December 22nd:

Even nicer is the image below (a team effort; click on the image for details). It shows (top row) Uranus and Neptune; (second row) Earth, the white dwarf star Sirius B, and Venus; (third row) Mars and Mercury; and (fourth row) the Moon, Pluto, and the dwarf planet Haumea. The last five are shown in more detail here.